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Boutique Bass Builder: Hiro Miura
Boutique Bass Builder: Hiro Miura…
Hiro Miura once dreamt of using his hands to pilot the controls of jets as he flew across the globe at supersonic speeds. Now, his hands are used to fulfill the dreams of musicians. In a small workshop near the Van Nuys airport, he makes guitars and basses that transmit his craftsmanship around the world at the speed of sound.
The man who designed and built instruments for such musical icons as Carmine Rojas, Chuck Rainey, John Pena, Chris Duarte, and Katsuji Morioka, never saw himself as a world renowned builder. He simply wanted to fly airplanes.
Life has a funny way of pushing you in one direction while making you think you are going in another. The aspirations of youth are often rerouted when the world interjects itself in your reality. Cowboys become accountants. Rock stars become convenience store clerks. And pilots become instrument makers.
Miura had always enjoyed playing guitars as a hobby and never gave the instrument much thought until he lost interest in attending college. He dropped out to become a guitar salesman for Moon Guitars in Japan. He stepped foot on that path at a time when the Yen trumped the U.S. dollar and the Japanese craze for vintage American guitars in the early 1980s was just taking off.
He was sent to America to buy vintage guitars and bring them back for resale Japan. After a few years of hopping back and forth across the Pacific, he decided to make Los Angeles his home in 1986.
While buying, selling, and studying vintage guitars, he befriended custom guitar builder Taku Sakashita.
“I told him about my design ideas for a new guitar head and body,” recalls Miura. “Taku built the first one for me and then showed me how to make it myself.”
Miura and Sakashita were often joined by the legendary bass builder Nicholas Tung. The trio would share ideas and experiment with various designs and building concepts. It was that experience of working with master luthiers that inspired Miura to build and later launch his own brand, Xotic Guitars, in 1996.
Unlike other builders, Miura didn’t design his guitars to showcase his artistic abilities. His passion was, and continues to be, creating an instrument that allows the musician to play without concentrating on the physical act of doing so. In other words, he wanted to create the tools that lent themselves to effortless mastery.
After 18 years with Xotic, Miura decided it was time for a change. He left Xotic and started Miura Guitars in August 2014. He is the sole employee and his personal motto is reflected in his mission statement: “Never complete, keep evolving.”
“I have no plans to bring on any other employees. I’d rather do the work myself,” said Miura. “It’s not hard to have someone make the instrument. But even if we use the same wood and the same parts, theirs will sound different than mine. I want to make sure every instrument that leaves my shop sounds the way I want it to sound.”
Miura currently builds two bass models that he designed with playability and tone as his top priorities: the MB-2 (below) and the MB-1 (shown at top of article).
“The MB-2 is my simple bass. I don’t like many decorations and I want a simple instrument that the working musician can afford,” said Miura. “Many basses are headstock heavy so it’s hard for the bass player, and more stressful, for longer playing. I don’t want you to think about the instrument. I want you to think about the music.”
The MB-2 has an ash (or alder) body with a 34-inch scale (22-fret) maple neck and maple or Pau Ferro fingerboard. Miura uses Hip Shot Type-B bridges and Aguilar Super Singles pickups and an Aguilar OBP-3 pre-amp. The control set up features a master volume, pickup blender pot, master tone, with mini pots for active eq (bass, mid, treble). The mini-switch allows for plus/minus 16 dB @ 400Hz or 800 Hz.
Miura considers his MB-1 to be his flagship model. It features an angled head stock, 24 frets and uses either the Hipshot Type-A, Type-B and Badass (5-string only) bridge. Top wood choices are olive, quilted maple, maple burl, walnut, mahogany, as well as other premium woods. Fingerboard options are maple and Madagascar rosewood.
The electronics are upgraded to higher end Aguilar, Delano, Bartolini, or Kent Armstrong for pickups, and East, Glocken, or Michael Pope for preamps.
Miura’s guitars and basses are currently built to order. “There are not many companies doing it with one person,” said Miura, laughing. “I make the body and the neck. The paint is done outside. But other than that, I touch every part myself.”
“When luthiers work by themselves, one instrument is very expensive and usually not within reach of most working musicians. I want to make top quality instruments that are affordable for people who will play them. That’s why I can only make about eight guitars or basses a month.”
Miura often drives five hours north of his workshop to find the right wood to use in his instruments. “It would be nice to just be able to make 10 necks and 10 bodies and put them together. But I can’t do that. I have to find the right wood that balances that particular instrument’s body with the neck. Wood has very different properties. It can have the same weight and be physically balanced, but still not sound right. I have to choose the right wood to make a good bass sound great.”
For more information about Miura Guitars, visit his website at www.miuraguitars.com.
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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